


have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

by heylifeitsemily



Series: awfully fond [6]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Angst, F/M, Moon Godlike Watcher, Pre-Relationship, asking for a friend, what do you call it when your dearest friend drops everything to sit by your lifeless body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 03:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19123531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heylifeitsemily/pseuds/heylifeitsemily
Summary: The Watcher always ran colder than the rest of them. When Edér takes her hand in the Captain's quarters of the Defiant, he almost convinces himself that the cold is comforting.





	have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

Evain always ran colder than the rest of them - something to do with the Godlike physiology, though the specifics of the explanation were always lost on him. When Edér takes her hand in the Captain's quarters of the Defiant, he almost convinces himself that the cold is comforting.

Only with his eyes closed. The glow of her, the subtle white markings that trail over her cheeks and the glimmer of the bluish skin beneath, is like looking at the smoke off a snuffed candle. Lifeless. Empty. He gives her hand that one-two squeeze that used to come easy as breathing, even though he knows she won't return it. Can't return it.

Yet.

He smooths back her hair. There’s this feeling in his gut that he can’t quite explain, but he knows that the world isn’t through with her yet. Her muscles seem too tense for a woman wholly divested of her soul, and any minute now she’ll shoot up, kick off the blankets, and march topside with a course already in mind.

Edér shakes his head. He should know by now that if anything’s holding her to this life, it’s her own two clenched fists aiming for a reckoning.

The steward made it out of the fallout with only a few fingers and the tip of her nose as collateral. She’s deigned not to speak to him any further, not after he needled her for details on how it happened the sixth or seventh time.  

He’d been having dreams that toed the line of nightmares more and more often in the last couple months. The earth rumbling for hours on end but not splitting. The sun burning a hole in the sea.  

Edér had once asked her what a soul looked like.

_“It’s not really something you can describe with words,” she says. He’s waxing poetic, but in the memory she’s almost sparkling in the moonglow, leaning against an oak while she sharpens her daggers. “But you can tell the difference from person to person. Different imprints.”_

_It takes another swig from his bottle before he garners the courage to ask. “What’s mine like?”_

_“I try not to look unless I have to. It feels like an invasion of privacy.”_

_He leans backwards, arms wide open. “Ain’t getting a better invitation than this.”_

_She stops sliding the blade over whetstone. He’s never seen her jaw move like that before. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”_

_“Is it gonna hurt?”_

_Her lip quirks up. “Don’t think so.”_

_“Then by all means.”_

_The only indication that she’s started is her eyes. The white seems to turn to wisps in a cloud of black, like smoke traveling over a stream by night. Her palms stay pressed flat against the tops of her thighs, face still caught in that half-smile he’s so fond of teasing out of her. A guy could get used to being stared at like that._

_A minute passes before the ink in her eyes recedes._

_“It’s kind of gold,” she offers. He nods, waiting for her to continue._

_“Imagine,” she throws a hand up in the air before leaning back against the bark. “digging your toes into sand. Or the way pie smells when it’s out on the window sill.”_

_Might be the drink, but he thinks that half-smile’s gotten a whit tighter. “What kind of pie?”_

_“Strawberry-rhubarb.”_

_He rubs his chin. “I’ll take that.”_

The steward told him that souls were torn right out of peoples' chests. Zipping through the dust until the pillars of adra glowed as bright as the afternoon sun.

He imagines Evain’s soul looks sort of like a bed of lilac.

The crescent shaped horn over her forehead catches the light coming through the porthole sometimes. It’s gone when he blinks, but enough to have him leaning forward in his chair again, fingers searching her wrist for a pulse.

She has to wake up. Otherwise, he’s uprooted his entire life and spent all his savings to chase down a god with nothing but his own two hands. Otherwise, she died out in a field surrounded by rubble from the castle she rebuilt stone by stone, with nothing but the sky to set her soul at ease.

He’ll track down Eothas alone if that's what it takes. His god is going to answer to him one way or another.

Edér closes his eyes and leans back in the chair, thumb brushing back and forth over her hand. If he drowns out the shifting waves and the brine in the air, it's almost like any other night at the inn, watching over the Watcher and waiting for her wounds to heal.

Tomorrow. She'll wake up tomorrow. He's got a good feeling about it.

**Author's Note:**

> Who will ride or die for me like this
> 
> (Other things Edér's soul is like  
> \- when you're driving by a wheat field on the highway  
> \- black pepper  
> \- the upturned dirt of a freshly dug grave  
> \- a bear hug that's just a little too tight  
> \- sunburns on your shoulders)


End file.
